William M. Briggs

This classic column originally ran 31 July 2008. I edited it to provide a working link to the paper and to add the author's Fig. 1. I have no idea,…

This classic column originally ran on 12 June 2008. Nothing is true unless it has been demonstrated and published in a peer-reviewed journal. For example, until last week, many people…

An intelligent person would have taken the week of July 4 off, as it is one of the slowest, if not the slowest, of the year. I shall be taking…

We want Pr(Hypothesis true|Evidence) but get Pr(Data we didn't see | Hypothesis false). This makes no sense, but I promise that is what is done. My friends, it gets real…

I stole that title, ripped it right off, word-for-word, from the Study Finds website, a source rich in The Science exaggerations. I pulled off this heist because I can't think…

A coincidence, or co-incidents, as we have discussed, is the joining together of two or more events that stick in your mind and call out for a causal connection. Here…

Am I wrong that we grow weary hearing about error-laden "climate change" science? I know I am, and have been. But what about you? When Trump won the first time…

We want Pr(Y|X) where Y is a question about the world and X all/everything/in toto of what we assume is probative. That's not what we get usually. But we should!…